Launching in conjunction with CityFibre, the fibre optic network will offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, out-performing BT Openreach's 300 megabits per second.

Sky and TalkTalk are planning to debut the service in York and two more unnamed cities in 2015, but the two companies will continue to compete with each other for customers.

"This marks TalkTalk taking its first steps into investing in building infrastructure as part of our mission to make British homes and businesses better off," said TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding.

Sky claims that the launch of the new network will mark the first time such high speeds have been available on a city-wide basis.